I know about as much about soccer as I know about crochet. That is, nothing. Consequently, I had never photographed at a soccer match before. When I was working on the “Sports Photography” chapter for our beginner’s photography book, the corresponding photos were of course missing. And in a German book, you need to have something with soccer when it comes to sports. Anything else would be completely unthinkable.

So what to do?

So nothing helped, I needed soccer pictures desperately. Our local club, SV Heiligenfelde, plays in the district league (maybe someone can explain to me where to place that … ) and so I picked a home game. The weather was good and so I went off without knowing what would come my way. As I said, zero idea. Well, I knew that there were 22 players and one ball involved. And that the round thing has to go into the square thing. And I had a vague idea that I would probably need the long focal lengths.  But that was it. This would probably be a whole new experience for me.

I was more or less right about the focal lengths. Even a village soccer field is comparatively large (yes, yes, the soccer fans among you knew that, of course, but I had never seen a game live …). However, the players sometimes came so threateningly close to me that the minimum focusing distance of the 500 mm was undercut. Good that I had the second camera body equipped with a 70 – 200 mm. That way I was really equipped for everything.

However, if you have no idea about the game, it is very difficult to predict what will happen in the next moment. Accordingly, I was unprepared when something exciting suddenly happened. And the photographic result was correspondingly poor. Most of the time I was simply too late. Namely, when the ball was already long out of the picture. And soccer photos without a ball are not really exciting. Besides, there were always so many people on the field that I could hardly decide where to point the camera. After ninety minutes, however, I did get a few usable pictures on the card. Enough for the sports chapter, anyway.

Here are two more examples:

Two soccer players in a duel

The goal keeper

Conclusion

That was a whole new experience and a real challenge. But it was fun. Maybe I’ll go to another home game. Even though I still don’t know what all the people on the field are actually doing.